SCS Today: May 15, 2000

SCS Spring Picnic
Wednesday, May 17,
12:00-6:30 pm (with the main food being served mainly between 1 p.m and 5 p.m.).

Volunteers are still needed to organize food and entertainment before the date, to pickup of food, to cleanup, to cook, etc. To volunteer, send email to decfive @ cs.cmu.edu

The Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club, an undergraduate organization, wins first place at the fourteenth annual International Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Walking Machine Decathlon competition on April 29, 2000, at Colorado State University. This is the first time Carnegie Mellon has won in the fourteen year history of the competition.

The Walking Machine Decathlon encourages students to design, build, and test a machine with independent legs that walks, climbs, and maneuvers around objects. Students must prepare for ten decathlon events: dash, load retrieval, slalom, grand tour, object seeking, trip wire, object retrieval, obstacle course, object seeking through an obstacle course, and hill climb.

With their robot "Jim 2," the Robotics Club won seven of the ten events, outperforming 11 other robots and winning more than twice the points of the second place team. The Robotics Club also won two special awards: the Excellence in Autonomy Award and the Overall Award of Excellence.

The Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club is an undergraduate organization that encourages its members to start a robotics project or join other students on a project, such as a Mobot or an autonomous submersible helicopter. The club provides space, tools, supplies, financial backing, access to knowledgeable people, and free Internet space to its members.

For more information about the Robotics Club, see the club's web page at:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/usr/rc99/rc.html

SAE Press Release is located on the Internet at:
http://www.sae.org/news/cmu.htm

The Society of Automotive Engineers web site is:
http://www.sae.org/

It was standing room only in McConomy Auditorium on May 3rd for the Building Virtual World Exhibition. In addition to Carnegie Mellon students, faculty, and participants' relatives were a host of distinguished guests, including:

• Jim Morris, Dean of the School of Computer Science
• Christopher Stapleton, Director of Entertainment Research, Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida
  
• Paul Gustavson, Vice Chair BOM Study Group, Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization SISO
  
• Dale Lazar, Amusement & Music Operators Association
  
• Michael Macedonia, Chief Scientist, Simulation Training Instrumentation Command, U.S. Department of Defense
  
• Fred Petitt, Director, Epcot Science
  
• Hank Robitaille, Walt Disney World, Epcot Science Jam
  
• Sara Joyce, Computer Graphics Recruiter, Industrial Light & Magic
  
• Liam Scanlon, Director of Technical Directors, Industrial Light & Magic
  
• John David Miller, Industrial Light and Magic
• Zsuzsi Pek, School of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Warwick, England
• Joe Garlington, Disney Imagineering

Read more about the BVW Show in the May 1st edition of SCS Today.

Some of This Week's Talks and Events:

May 15

Final Examinations

May 16

Thesis Proposal
Tze Sing Eugene Ng, CSD
"A Distributed Waypoint Service Approach to Virtually Expand the IP Address Space"
11:00 am, 4623 Wean Hall

May 17

SCS Spring Picnic
Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Pavilion in Schenley Park
12:00-6:30 p.m.

SCS Faculty Candidate Talk
Tuomas Sandholm, Washington University
"Leveled Commitment Contracts for Automated Negotiation: A Backtracking Instrument for Multiagent Systems"
10:00 a.m., 4623 Wean Hall

May 18

CSD Black Friday
Artificial Intelligence/Theory
Programming Systems/Computer Systems
9:30 am / 1:00 pm, Wean 4623

May 19

CSD Black Friday
Group Meeting
10:00 pm, Wean 4623

See the SCS Calendar web page for more events and information.
http://www.scs.cmu.edu/news/calendar.html